1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to network systems, and in particular, to network management.
2. Description of the Related Art
Complex software systems today are often distributed throughout a network of computers within a local area network (LAN) or wide area network (WAN). Components of such a system may be added, removed, or moved to different machines throughout the lifetime of the system. Moreover, the software components of such systems must often interact with one another across machine boundaries. To do so, the components must know the location and availability of the various other components in the system. Finally, configuration management or fault analysis of each of the components in the system is required.
To provide for location and monitoring of components, typically a simple network management protocol (SNMP) based system is used. However, this requires an SNMP agent on every machine. Moreover, SNMP employs ports that are not typically accessible through a firewall, preventing location of entities that exist past the firewall.
For configuration, each machine must be manually configured to know the location of other components. However, manual configuration is expensive and error prone. Alternatively, a multicasting technique may be employed wherein a component multicasts a request to another component and hopes the other components hear the request and respond. While multicasting is an efficient mechanism, multicasting is not fully supported in many LAN environments and is limited by routers that do not forward multicast packets.
Finally, to manage the components of a system, typically, a central management server is provided for the management application. The system administrator must then know where the management application is and what its name and interface are. Moreover, if component software is upgraded, the management software must also be upgraded. Further, centralized management limits the ability to distribute management applications.
These and other drawbacks in the prior art are overcome in large part by a system and method according to the present invention. An Auto-Discovery Unit is provided wherein an administrator may input a series of internal Protocol (IP) addresses inside which the system exists. The Auto-discovery Unit steps through the IP addresses testing to determine whether a machine exists at the address. If a machine is found, an exploration process is undertaken wherein attempts are made to contact a Responder Unit on each machine. The Responder Unit accepts configuration information and returns a set of objects describing the hardware and software components of the machine. The Auto-Discovery Unit then stores this information. The process is repeated automatically at scheduled intervals.
Broadly speaking, the present invention relates to a network management system including a server having an auto-discovery unit for automatically determining the presence of system components and notifying other components of system requirements. A graphical user interface (GUI) including a network map is maintained for supervising operation of the auto-discovery system. The auto-discovery service is accessible remotely, such as via the World Wide Web.